


The Fool, Reversed

by CatKing_Catkin



Series: Widomauk Week [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Caleb Widogast Has Issues, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Caleb Widogast is a Mess, Dissociation, Dungeons & Dragons Game Mechanics, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: c02e089 Lingering Wounds, Feelings Realization, Forehead Kisses, Friendship/Love, Hopeful Ending, Hugs, Hurt Mollymauk Tealeaf, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, Kissing, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mollymauk Tealeaf Has Feelings, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, POV Mollymauk Tealeaf, Panic Attacks, Pining, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22151470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: In the aftermath of being freed alongside Yasha from Obann's control, in the heart of Rexxentraum and surrounded by potential foes on all sides, Mollymauk Tealeaf accidentally rediscovers the Supernal Surge ability.It doesn't go well. Fortunately, Caleb is there to help him fix a bad situation, and help him dig into some lingering bad feelings about his time under Obann's control. Sometimes a lot of fussing isn't required. Sometimes, you just need someone who understands what you're feeling well enough to help you find the words.Written for Widomauk Week 2019, Day 5, prompt "scars/scar kissing"
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Series: Widomauk Week [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1382416
Comments: 8
Kudos: 172





	The Fool, Reversed

**Author's Note:**

> When I start a fest, I fucking FINISH that fest. Even if it's six months later.

Before they’d been set free, it had felt like they’d only been themselves while they slept.

Now they were free, and sleep was the time they were dragged forcibly back into the nightmare that had been their existence for months on end. 

_There was no way to really say which had been the worst part, because everything had been hell. Yet the fact that they’d been kept just barely past arm’s reach from each other at almost all times had been, somehow, an especially brutal twist of the knife. They’d still loved each other so fiercely. They’d still been awake and aware enough, trapped inside their own heads, to know that much. And yet, in their waking hours, they’d simply walked where they were told, done what they were told, killed who they were told, and in between times had been nothing but standing placidly and staring at nothing and screaming themselves sick inside._

_Obann had made sure they were never free to do anything so much as reach out and hold each other’s hand._

And now they were back, now they were _free_ (except it felt like they’d never be truly free of what had happened ever again). Now Molly and Yasha could cling to each other as much as they wanted, and it felt like no amount would ever be enough, except they were in the capital city surrounded by very important people and the fate of maybe two entire nations was resting on them along with the rest of the Mighty Nein. So they couldn’t do that, they had to keep it all together and pretend everything was okay. 

They weren’t the only ones pretending.

 _Oh, Mr. Caleb_ , Molly thought sadly, watching as Caleb bowed his head and scratched his arms yet again. _I wish we could have spared you this_. He wished that, somehow, Obann had picked another fane to start with, so that perhaps the Mighty Nein could have struck him down anywhere but the capital city where so much pain for their wizard still lurked. 

He wanted to reach out, say something, but Molly felt empty and brittle and drained and somehow felt certain that trying to make Caleb feel better about any of this at all wouldn’t end well for either of them. Better to leave that to those of his friends who were in better shape. At least he could try not to make a nuisance of himself so Caleb got the focus and attention he needed.

(At least he could still crowd around Caleb alongside the others and lay a hand on his arm and _glare_ defiantly at Trent Ikithon, tail lashing, teeth bared, promising with every inch of him that only death awaited the old man should he take one step closer.)

He wanted to go home. He wanted to go back to the Xhorhaus and the room he shared with Yasha and the mural of flowers on the wall. Molly let that bone-deep ache motivate him to stay present, to do what he could. He wasn’t smart enough to contribute much to the negotiations but he was good at reading people, he’d always been good at reading people, even and especially the rich and the powerful. He stood or sat beside Yasha as negotiations droned on, his tail looped around her ankle, and watched intently for any sign of deception or falsehood, any hint that they were being set up for a trap. 

So far, everything seemed okay on that front. Even Ikithon was playing it somewhat safe. None of them seemed to know what to make of the Mighty Nein. That was something. They could use that. Being unpredictable and strange and outside it all could keep you alive. 

And yet, none of this was right, none of this was where he belonged or where he wanted to be, so when Fjord suggested they go and find a fight club, Molly leaped at the chance. The way it felt to wend his aimless way down the street with the Mighty Nein, looking for trouble and causing it, made everything feel almost normal. 

He was pretty sure he didn’t actually try to lose. But something in him recoiled at the idea of slicing his blades across his arms and lighting them up. So he didn’t light them up.

And something about the bone-rattling impacts he took from his opponent’s greatclub and the taste of blood in his mouth, the ringing in his ears and the nothing in his brain, felt so deliriously good. When his vision finally, properly cleared, Molly was on his back and staring at the ceiling and his opponent was laughing uproariously, but also offering a hand to help him up. Molly burst into a fit of hysterical giggles, accepted the offered aid, kissed the dragonborn’s cheek, and then dragged him over to the bar to buy him a bottle of something expensive and effective. 

From there, he watched Yasha square off against the Champion. And Molly was pretty sure within seconds that she was actually trying to lose. 

He understood, so much and so well that it hurt. 

He would have bought her a round himself if Caleb didn’t beat him to it. As it was, Molly just leaned around Yasha to offer Caleb a nod of thanks and a raised tankard. Caleb nodded back, once, with perfect understanding in his eyes. 

And then, as he brushed past them both to rejoin the others, he actually reached out to squeeze Molly’s shoulder. The contact was fleeting and yet Molly was mildly horrified when even that much was enough to make his throat go tight.

He ducked his head to stare into the dregs at the bottom of his tankard. Fuck. He was so fucking fragile right now. He was seized by a sudden, wild urge to goad his new dragonborn friend into taking him back into that cage and beating it out of him.

Then he leaned a little against Yasha, and the urge passed, or at least it went quiet long enough for the rest of the group to decide they were ready to leave.

Then Nott met them outside, and she’d stolen hats for them all, and that was so genuinely, delightfully weird that everything became okay again for a while longer. He felt like himself again for a while longer. He remembered what it might be like to feel like himself in the first place. She bestowed upon Molly an obnoxiously floppy bonnet festooned with silk flowers and he adored her for it, could have kissed her for it. 

They all lined up after receiving their hats and marched back to their quarters proudly, for they were the Mighty Nein, and it was easy to feel confident in that moment that they were going to take this city by storm.

Somehow - he didn’t know why, refused to wonder about it too closely - he and Caleb wound up walking side by side.

Somehow - maybe simply because they were both so very tired - Caleb took Molly’s arm without any words being spoken as they walked along. Molly didn’t look at Caleb, too afraid to break the spell. But he reached over and squeezed the human’s hand, and Caleb squeezed back.

He slept like the dead that night when he and Yasha collapsed into bed together, awake just long enough to dimly register the sight of Caleb drawing the blankets up and over them both. Then Molly slept heavily and deeply, and if he still felt exhausted when he woke the next morning, at least he’d been spared dreams for one night.

* * *

The gardens behind the inn where they were staying were lovely. Molly and Yasha spent a lot of time out there, though Yasha mostly spent it reading voraciously so Molly was mostly left to amuse himself.

That was harder to do than it had once been. His thoughts kept going fuzzy at the edges and sliding into dangerous territory and he didn’t know how to make them _stop_. 

(He considered going and asking Caleb if Caleb had any books he could lend to Molly to read, and was _pretty sure_ that if he did then Caleb would understand and wouldn’t ask him why. But he was only pretty sure of that, and the lingering traces of uncertainty were still more than enough to make him shy away like a coward.)

The thing was that Fight Club Night had been the first time he’d drawn his swords under his own power and without Obann’s influence _somewhere_ involved in literal, actual months. Molly wasn’t _that_ stupid. He could look back on his hesitation to use his blood rites and understand why he’d balked.

_“Oh dear,” Obann drawled, as they stood in the middle of the hall and watched as people in blue robes fled in every direction around them. “Molly, my darling, Yasha might have her hands full. Why don’t you go and give her a hand so we’re not here all day?”_

_And just like that, without any hesitation at all, Molly drew his swords then drew one across each arm - two more scars to add to the multitude. The scimitars were immediately coated in a layer of ice cold enough to steam, and he was already racing off to cut down the straggler._

Molly dragged himself forcibly back to reality with a shudder, holding on by the tips of his fingers. Holding on to the here and now became suddenly even harder when his vision cleared and the first sight to greet his eyes were his own bared forearms and the new scars marring them.

They would have looked identical to the others to anyone else. To Molly, however, they stood out like beacons, each and every one. Even the new marks he couldn’t see, along his shoulders or the back of his neck, were like a perpetual itch under his skin. They were marks of his shame and violation and marks of the evil things he had done under someone else’s control (but not so far under that he couldn’t remember). 

Molly blinked, and this time it was a dull throb of pain that brought him back to reality. He stared down at his hand as if it were a stranger’s, at the clawed finger he was furrowing along one scar, perpendicular, as if by bisecting the neat, silvery line he could somehow make its wrongness visible. As if that might help ease the weight.

 _But it won’t_ , he thought dully. _It’ll just make it so everyone sees, not just you. They’ll all be able to look and see every single bloody time he made you hurt someone. Every single time he reminded you that these were never really your powers in the first place._

He wasn’t sure what would be worse - if they regarded such a visible sign with disdain for his weakness, or pity for his suffering.

 _And you know it won’t help, or else you’d have gotten your sword out and done this_ properly _._

He knew that, too.

And yet, he kept scratching along his arm, giving in to the itch that had plagued him since the dust settled and Obann dissolved. The pain felt good. That was an ugly thought to confront - it wasn’t an unfamiliar thought, not by a longshot, but he’d never dared to look too closely at it before now, afraid what it might mean. 

Now, he stared it straight in the face. The pain felt good. _This is what you deserve_. _This is what you_ are _._ He caught himself waiting with bated breath for the moment the skin would break beneath his nails, for when the blood would flow ( _by his own choice, this time)_.

In the end, the sight of Yasha out of the corner of his eye was a welcome distraction, and probably the only one that could have done the trick in breaking him out of his fugue. He brightened immediately, waving at her and hurrying over. “Well, hello! All full up on words today? We should probably—”

He saw that she was looking straight through him a scant second before she walked right through him without missing a step. Molly had a sudden, violent sense of being _disconnected_ and _dispersed_ before his vision cleared and he found himself back in one piece, shuddering violently. He whirled around to stare wildly at her, just in time to see her shiver as if she’d simply felt a cold breeze, before she carried on back towards the inn, leaving him behind to panic and hyperventilate without lungs.

A quick, frantic few minutes of testing confirmed his situation - he could pass through solid objects as if they were nothing, probably wasn’t even _really_ touching the ground, could make himself very briefly solid with very intense focus but not solid enough to be seen. 

He was, to all appearances, a ghost. Without warning, in this beautiful garden on this sunny day, he had become a ghost. 

The next little while, the next however long, passed in a haze. There was only a blur of frantic pacing, talking to himself, tugging at his hair, and spiraling down and further down into his own head.

When he came back to himself, Molly was curled up under a tree, rocking back and forth somewhat. His thoughts were starting to come easier again, probably because he’d simply outright exhausted his capacity for panic. That was fine. That was useful. He’d deal with that later, but for now…

_This is temporary, right?_

Even if it was temporary, if it lasted too long, he was afraid he might go genuinely insane. 

_Someone can fix this, right?_

That was an easy thought to latch on to. One of the Mighty Nein could fix this. All had to do was find some way to make his situation known. The clerics could do something. Or Fjord could make puppy-dog eyes at the Wildmother to fix him. Or Caleb had probably read about this in a book somewhere

His head snapped up. His eyes went wide, and Molly found himself scrambling back up to his feet. The thought of Caleb was tightly linked to a lot of other thoughts, and some of those thoughts were ones that Molly also refused to look too closely at _(their lives were complicated enough)_ , but one of those thoughts was Frumpkin.

 _Cats. There are stories about cats. Cats can see things that aren’t there, can’t they?_ _Even magic fae cats?_

It was a hope. It was a lifeline, and it got him dashing back towards the inn to follow up on it. He barreled through the closed door in his haste and stumbled through three other patrons, all of whom shivered at his passing. The stairs gave him some trouble - he was pretty sure he was kept from drifting through the floor by virtue of not thinking too hard about the possibility, and taking the stairs made that harder. But eventually he made it to the stretch of hallway where the Mighty Nein had been given rooms, found Caleb’s door, and shoved his way through it into the room beyond. 

His heart felt as if it had leaped into his throat - Caleb was in the room, _finally_ something was going his way. The wizard sat cross-legged on the floor beside his bed, pouring over an assortment of mismatched odds and ends on the floor in front of him, probably his spell components. Molly had barely enough time to see Frumpkin settled down beside Caleb before the cat suddenly surged to his feet, back arched, hissing like a fiend. His round, bright eyes were fixed firmly _on_ Molly. Caleb startled violently and stared down at his familiar. _“W-Was zur hölle?”_

The relief was immediate and overwhelming, so much so that Molly broke down in a fit of exhausted, hysterical giggling. “Listen, I know, I know,” he said to Frumpkin, holding up both hands in a gesture of peace. Frumpkin stubbornly continued to hiss. “Look, I don’t know if you can understand me, I know you sure as hell don’t have to believe any of this, but I’m _me,_ all right? Still me, still Molly. And I’d very much like Caleb’s help not being a ghost anymore. Could you just do me a favor and pass that along to him?”

Frumpkin’s hackles slowly started to settle, though that might have been as much due to Caleb’s fretful petting as it was Molly’s words. He continued to glare balefully at Molly for long enough that Molly started to wonder if Frumpkin was going to leave him like this out of nothing more than feline _spite_.

But apparently, that was only as long as it took to telepathically pass a message along. Caleb suddenly sucked in an indrawn breath as tension seized his shoulders and the blood drained from his face. He looked like someone who’d just been stabbed, as he lifted his head to stare towards the door. “Mollymauk?”

“Yes!” Molly cried, before he remembered himself. Caleb gave no sign of hearing him, and instead bent back over his array of spell components with a much more intent look on his face. For lack of anything better to do, Molly went over and kneeled down on the other side of Caleb from Frumpkin, scanning the components himself, trying to settle his nerves by guessing at what the wizard’s goal might be.

In the end, Caleb grabbed up two thumb-sized bottles. He popped the cork off of one, dipped his finger in, and used it to apply a silvery residue to one eyelid. He repeated the process with the other bottle, though this time the substance smelled of talc, all the while muttering an incantation.

When the human opened his eyes again, they were blue from edge to edge, exactly as they were when he borrowed Frumpkin’s senses. He stared towards the door, frowned, then glanced anxiously around the room, chewing on a thumbnail. When he finally focused on Molly sitting right beside him, he startled so badly that he fell back with a yelp, catching himself on his hands. “Mollymauk?!”

“Hello there!” Molly was practically vibrating with pent-up tension at that point. “Oh, you beautiful, _beautiful_ wizard.” Acting on instinct, he leaned forward to clasp Caleb’s hands in his - but of course, his hands still passed right through, and Caleb clearly felt nothing but cold air.

Caleb frowned, but did not pull his hands away and, most importantly, he did not waste time or breath asking ridiculous questions like _what happened_ or _why are you a ghost_. Instead, he simply went through the motions for a spell to dispel magic. Molly held a breath that he wasn’t sure he had, as Caleb flared with an even brighter power than he’d mustered to set Jourrael free from Obann’s thrall. The spell completed, the wave of dispelling force washed over Molly, and right before he closed his eyes and braced himself he saw that Caleb was holding his breath, too.

Then he heard Caleb speak, low and tense. _“Scheisse.”_ Molly’s heart sank, and he opened his eyes to the sight of the wizard’s abject disappointment. A quick swipe of his hand through the leg of Caleb’s dresser confirmed for Molly well enough that his situation was unchanged.

Molly opened his mouth to speak. Caleb held up a hand for silence, and Molly reluctantly obliged. The human took three long, shuddering breaths, swallowed once, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then nodded to himself.

“I haven’t heard any commotion from outside,” he said. “If I went looking, would I find your dead body laying somewhere around?”

Molly shook his head. “I’d know me anywhere, and I didn’t see me laying around. Or anyone walking off with me.” Not that he’d necessarily been in a position to pay attention to much, he remembered.

The barest, briefest smile flickered across Caleb’s face. “That eliminates some possible explanations, then. Some of the worse ones.” He uncurled a little, sitting up straight and folding his arms to regard Molly properly. “Did you see anyone else suspicious just before this happened to you? Anyone at all? Anyone who gave you a bad feeling?”

“Most everyone here gives me a bad feeling, Caleb.”

Caleb made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, more of a long, exhausted sigh with the barest edge of black humor to it. “I know.” And then: “Not that it matters, I suppose. This, whatever it is, isn’t a spell.”

“So you can’t dispel it?” He tried to keep the rising panic out of his voice, still aware that such a thing would not be helpful right now. Dimly, belatedly, he remebered his earlier resolution to _not be a nuisance_ , so that Caleb could have one less thing to worry about. Increasingly desperate, he found himself adding: “I didn’t see anyone, but it’s not like I was really keeping an eye out. I was just, I don’t know - standing around, thinking, waiting for Yasha to get done with her book and feeling _amazingly_ bored. I wasn’t _doing_ anything.”

Except a cold and brutally rational part of him whispered that that wasn’t _entirely_ true, was it? As if in response, the scar he’d been worrying at gave a throb of phantom pain all up his arm. 

Caleb stared at him for a moment longer, with such a focused intensity that Molly briefly felt as if he were being seen _into_ rather than _through_. His friend’s mouth drew into a thin, tight line and at last, slowly, he nodded.

“I have,” he said, and with an unerring instinct, he grabbed up a small wooden box from the ground. “One more idea.” He flipped the lid open and tilted it for Molly to see inside, where he beheld a pile of fine, fragile butterfly cocoons. “I know it isn’t your favorite way to feel, but, ah—”

“Do it,” Molly said flatly. Anything and any shape would be better than being cut off from the world like this. If Caleb thought it would help, then it had to be at least worth a try.

Caleb needed no further encouragement. He took up one of the cocoons and crushed it before starting to twine the silky strands of it through his fingers. As he started to chant, Molly braced himself for the feeling of change, of transformation…

The next feeling he knew was that of a warm, large hand resting heavily on his head before stroking all along his furry back to the base of his tail. Molly’s eyes flew open and he perceived the world on a different scale, from much smaller and lower to the ground. 

_Cat_. He was a cat. And his feline mind was…different. His thoughts were slower, simpler. It was possible to recognize that much but it somehow didn’t seem like anything he should care about - not when the world was suddenly so unmistakably physical again, not when he was surrounded by scents and sensations and Caleb’s hand felt so warm and good.

Molly rolled onto his back and offered his stomach and purred as loud and as long as he could as Caleb tentatively petted him there, too. It seemed the only possible way to even start thanking Caleb for fixing him, saving him. Already, the memory of being…whatever he’d been before (the word didn’t seem possible to wrap his mind around at the moment) seemed distant and far away and the relief was indescribable. 

In the end, he clambered up into Caleb’s lap, and Caleb let him do so. Molly felt the heat of Frumpkin’s affronted glare but did not deign to acknowledge it. He simply settled down and curled up there on Caleb’s legs and kept right on purring as Caleb continued to lavish him with attention and _touch_. _Good_ , his cat-brain thought, as he offered his chin and Caleb obliged him with scritches. _Good warm safe._ On instinct, his paws started to knead, toes flexing. _Happy._ When was the last time he’d been happy? 

Past and future were distant, meaningless. There was only this moment and him existing in it. He nuzzled his head as hard as he could into Caleb’s hand before licking at his fingers, tasting as they did of ink and magic. _Mine_. 

He drifted into a state that wasn’t quite sleep, more a sort of aimless, thoughtless euphoria. He let himself be lost to the scents and sensations that surrounded him on all sides - Caleb’s calloused fingers, the worn fabric of his pants, the infinitely varied scents of the spell components on the floor and the cleaner smells of soap around the bed linens or polish on the desktop. The distant flutter of a bird alighting on a tree outside the window. Frumpkin breathing. Caleb humming softly. It was almost like he was purring, too. 

Then, all of a sudden, Caleb lifted him up and settled him down on the floor. Molly’s eyes flew open - he let out a protesting mewl and tried to return to his spot on Caleb’s lap, but the human held him gently but firmly at bay. Tail lashing, ears low, Molly opened his mouth and let out a pleading meow and then—

—and then the world _twisted_ and his perspective _skewed_ and there was a strange but not inherently unpleasant sensation of every muscle stretching and every bone aching _all at once_ and suddenly he was a tiefling again, sitting there with Caleb’s hands still on his shoulders, mouth still open, except the only sound that emerged was a broken off: “— _ah_.”

“There we go,” Caleb said. His smile was thin and tired but also unmistakably relieved. And, after a moment, Molly fully registered precisely _why_ he was relieved. 

Caleb’s hands were still _on_ his shoulders. 

Molly took one long, deep breath, and then another and another. One shaking hand reached up to grip Caleb’s fiercely. The other rested _on_ the solid wooden floor, nails scratching and worrying at the grain of it, hearing the scrape, feeling the texture. He stared at Caleb in wonder and gratitude and adoration and the thought came to him, clear as a bell: _Fuck it_. Especially since Caleb didn’t seem about to make a big deal out of the fact that Molly had just spent a good long while curled up in his lap and had even tried to clamber back into his lap after being removed. He loved Caleb for a lot of reasons, but the fact that he seemed content to let that particular embarrassment pass without comment was _right_ at the top of the list in that moment. 

And words were still so very difficult. How could he even begin to express what he was feeling or what had led him to this point? So instead, Molly simply leaned forward, wrapped his arms around Caleb, and pulled him close. After a moment and a shiver, Caleb hugged him back and pressed his face against Molly’s shoulder. 

They stayed like that for a while - his sense of time was slowly starting to return, but was still fuzzy around the edges, and had never been as good as Caleb’s anyway. In the end, they wound up with Molly sprawled out on Caleb’s bed, staring up at the ceiling while Caleb cleared away his spell components and Frumpkin dozed on Molly’s chest, the earlier intrusion apparently forgiven. 

“So,” Molly said. “Do you have even the faintest idea why or what just happened?”

Caleb made a thoughtful sound from the floor. “Some.”

“Care to share?”

For a moment, it seemed as if Caleb wouldn’t be sharing at all, but finally he sighed softly and spoke: “Your powers. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve, ah, unexpectedly discovered an ability you turned out to have all along, would it?” 

That was true enough. _Drawing his swords in Allfield only for the blades to be coated in radiant light rather than the familiar ice. Sitting and sipping his drink later and very quietly trying not to have a nervous breakdown. Acting on desperate instinct when Fjord went down in the swamp, simply wishing fiercely for the poison to be gone and then being gobsmacked when it had started oozing out of his friend’s pores. Fingers accidentally brushing the dimensional anchor as he bent to examine it with Beau and suddenly being assaulted by images so horrifying that he had to leave the room to be sick in a corner._

“You think that was _supposed_ to happen?” he demanded, so aghast that he finally managed to look at Caleb again. 

Caleb gave a half-shrug. “Under more controlled circumstances, perhaps. For much less time. It could be useful in a fight, couldn’t it? Suddenly being spectral for a few seconds.”

“That was a lot longer in a few seconds.”

“It was your first time attempting this. Whatever ‘this’ is supposed to be. And, and it was an accidental attempt, besides. The shock, once you realized what had happened…you might have, ah, how to describe this?” He clicked his fingers once, twice, before settling on: “Gotten stuck.” 

_Gotten stuck_. He had gotten _stuck_ as a ghost. It was such a true and yet ridiculous way to describe the events of the last couple of hours that Molly burst out laughing, so hard and so heartfelt that Frumpkin got up off of him with an offended flick of his ears. 

Once he got his breath back, Molly looked back at Caleb, grinning, and was in time to see Caleb suppress a faint smile of his own. “Oh, you have _such_ a way with words, darling. I missed that.” 

He meant it casually enough, but realized too late - in the same second that Caleb did - that the three words carried a weight all their own, a reminder of bad times that still weren’t that far behind. Molly faltered, frowned, then stared fixedly back up at the ceiling. He was suddenly, fiercely in need of something to do with his hands. His arms itched. So did his shoulders and the back of his neck. 

Caleb was quiet. Molly could feel him staring. When the human finally spoke, he did so with the air of a man contemplating a very narrow bridge over a very long fall.

“As for…how this might have happened. How you triggered this, this power in the first place…I have some ideas about that, too.”

“Mm?” 

He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear, but somehow, speaking up enough to tell Caleb to stop talking seemed like too much effort in that moment. 

“Perhaps. I said it wasn’t a spell, and it isn’t, not truly. But there can be some similarities. Some overlap. To effect some supernatural change on the world, or on yourself…it, it isn’t just about making the motions and saying the words. It is very much about how you think. You have to think the right thoughts, focus in the right way, or it won’t work.”

_…oh._

Molly thought he caught the shape of Caleb’s point right there and then, even before Caleb found the words to try and elaborate. But the realization felt like it stole the breath from his lungs. It suddenly felt like a miracle that he could remember to keep breathing at all.

He certainly didn’t realize that he’d started moving until Caleb’s hand caught his wrist and held it there. Molly jolted with surprise, looking back at Caleb to find Caleb looking right at him, unflinching and intent. He realized then that he’d been about to start worrying at one of his new scars again, and that Caleb knew it, too. 

Without breaking their joined gazes, Caleb started to brush his thumb back and forth, back and forth over Molly’s skin, over old scars and new. Such a simple gesture, but there was a sort of fierce comfort to it all the same, and Molly both loved Caleb for offering it and _hated_ the traitorous shiver that ran up his spine, the way his heart ached with something wordless and needy. But Caleb simply carried on speaking, low and calm, as if neither of them had moved at all. 

“Mollymauk, as recently as _three days ago_ you were going through a terrible ordeal. One that left you a prisoner in your own body. Cut off from the world. That sort of experience—” Caleb’s gaze flicked down to his lap and then, with a visible effort, dragged up to Molly’s face again. “—it changes you, changes how you see the world and yourself. To spend such a long time helpless in your own body, used, controlled by someone else’s will—”

Molly realized with a dull, leaden horror that he could see tears gathering in Caleb’s eyes. He realized only belatedly then that he had already started to cry, too. But his throat might as well have had a vice around it, so it was all he could do to roll onto his side and seize Caleb’s hand in his, clinging to it as if the man himself were a lifeline. Caleb squeezed his hand fiercely in turn, took a deep shuddering breath, and somehow found the strength to carry on.

“—It becomes very easy to think of yourself as something, um, something insubstantial. As if you really are nothing more than a ghost, drifting through the world, only ever able to watch and never to act, and it is _so_ easy to think that that is all your life will ever be and you will never be anything more ever again, and—”

His voice faltered again, failed, and Molly had a moment of wondering how Caleb knew all of this, how he was able to articulate it all so _perfectly_? Each and every word fell like a blow or a shove to the chest because they were perfect in all the worst ways, they perfectly encapsulated how Molly had been feeling and the thoughts he’d been struggling with in a way that Molly never could have done on his own…

Then he remembered, and felt like even more of an idiot. He remembered the asylum. They hadn’t seen much. But, especially with Caleb’s own hesitant recounting of his past in mind, they’d seen and heard _enough_. 

Of course Caleb understood.

Of course he’d been able to piece together how Molly, in light of the past few months, might have accidentally willed himself into being a ghost. 

“But you will,” Caleb finished quietly, and Molly heard the barest tinge of relief in his voice, relief that Molly had caught on to what he was trying to say, relief that Molly understood, too. “You, of all people, I know you will.”

Molly moved so slowly and so carefully, afraid to shatter the moment, afraid to startle or scare Caleb and the delicate, crystalline understanding that lay between them. Like this, with Molly laying on the bed and Caleb sitting beside it, they were almost as eye-level. 

He gently pulled his hand free and reached out and felt a little thrill of warmth in his heart when Caleb did not pull away. Molly cradled Caleb’s face in his hands, tipped his head foreward, and pressed a long, lingering kiss to the other man’s forehead. It was as much as he dared, in that moment. But he fancied that, from the softness of Caleb’s sigh and the easing of the tension in his shoulders, that it counted for something. 

Even when he pulled away, he didn’t pull away far - just enough to press their brows together, to share their breath. “You are just about the most wonderfully brilliant man I have ever met, Caleb Widogast,” Molly whispered. “And you have put up with _so much shite_ for us lately. We’ll find a way to make it up to you soon. I promise. Because you, me, all of us, we’re in this together. Right?”

“Right.”

He didn’t push the matter any more than that. After all, there was every chance that Caleb didn’t know what it would take to get him feeling better, to get him feeling right and in control again after being dumped into a worst case scenario of his own. And that was fine. All he needed to know was that the Mighty Nein would be there to do whatever he needed when he finally puzzled his feelings out.

So Molly pulled away and then sat up properly on the bed and even that small act felt like a small victory. He saw Caleb smile, brief and bright as summer lightning, and tucked the memory of it away into his heart for the next bad day. 

Caleb looked Molly over with some consideration, and then something seemed to occur to him, something that made his gaze go a little unfocused, made him stare at nothing for a moment as he ran a hand distractedly through his hair. 

(That left Molly free for a moment to admire how his hair gleamed in the sunlight pouring in through the window, how it shone like spun copper after his bath. Sometimes it seemed as if he got more handsome every time Molly turned around. And he’d missed being free to do something as silly and soppy as admire Caleb’s good looks in person.)

“There is something,” Caleb said at last. “Something that, ah, used to help me in the past, when my thoughts would tend towards…bad directions. In the very early days. Would it be something you might like to try?”

“You know me,” Molly said mildly. “I’ll try anything once.”

Caleb nodded, then went for a seemingly random pocket of his coat, where he pulled out an ink pen. “May I see your arm?”

Molly hesitated for the barest fraction of a second too long - which was stupid, Caleb couldn’t _know_ except somehow he had - before shrugging up one sleeve of his coat and holding out his arm as requested. Caleb shifted his position fussily until he seemed convinced that Molly would stay still on his own. Then he braced Molly’s arm with one hand, uncapped the pen with his teeth, and leaned in closer.

The first brush of the nib against his skin made Molly wince, more in surprise than anything else. Caleb pulled back immediately, looking faintly alarmed. “S-Sorry, um, sorry, did that hurt you?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Molly hastened to say, cursing himself a little for how very _fragile_ he apparently still was. “Just startled me, it’s _fine_.” He made to put his arm back where Caleb had indicated - and then he hesitated. “Just, ah…what are you planning?”

Again, that brief, bright smile, and Molly couldn’t help but relax in the face of it. He looked so very _pleased_ with himself. “Nott called it a ‘goblin protection spell’,” he said. “A different one. Not, um, not the one with the flowers.”

“Oh?” That was enough to get his curiosity to overcome his nerves. Molly held his arm back out, Caleb nodded up at him in thanks, and then once again bent closer to start drawing the tip of the pen over his skin.

The sensation was strange. It was faintly sharp and faintly ticklish and he could definitely feel the trail of the ink being left behind, but Caleb’s head was in the way so that Molly couldn’t see what he was drawing. 

Perhaps sensing his growing restlessness, Caleb spoke up again. “New scars can carry a weight to them,” he said quietly. “I remember. This might help.”

Molly chuckled. “Have we met?” He held up his other forearm for inspection, lavender flesh criss-crossed with lines upon lines, _most_ inflicted by his own hand. Most of them never weighed on his mind at all. He scarred himself as easily as some people breathed. 

Caleb stared up at him and _right through him_ for a moment, frowning, clearly unimpressed with the deflection. Molly understood the full extent of how unimpressed he was when Caleb rolled up one sleeve and sat up enough to press his own arm against Molly’s, skin to skin, scars to scars, so that Molly was confronted with the viciously fine and precise marks of incision that mapped their way over Caleb’s skin, too. 

“A scar isn’t merely a mark on the skin,” Caleb said, his voice low and tight. “It’s all the memories of what put it there. They _itch_.” He ducked his head to stubbornly resume drawing. “I remember.”

 _Oh_.

And so of course it was easy for Molly to just not think much about his other scars, to accept them as a part of himself. The ones that Lucien had made had _no_ memories attached to them. The ones that Molly had made had always been for a reason of his own - to protect his friends, to make a point. Even the knot of twisted flesh over his heart from where one bastard slaver had nearly struck him down had come about as a result of trying to save his friends, damn the consequences. He couldn’t _regret_ that.

The ones that Obann had made him inflict on himself were different. Of course they were different. Each and every one represented a memory of being forced to turn his blades on an innocent person. Obann had turned Molly against the very foundations of what he’d d tried to make of his life. Of course those marks would be different. 

“Ah,” Molly said out loud. And then: “Sorry.” He’d let himself forget for a moment precisely how well Caleb understood. 

Caleb nodded, but didn’t say anything more until he finished his drawing. Then he blew gently over the ink to help it dry and Molly tried _so_ very hard not to shiver. “There we are,” Caleb said at last, and pulled back to let Molly inspect his work. Molly immediately did so, and felt his heart stutter traitorously in his chest as he recognized what he was looking at.

Caleb had drawn a simple, stylized cat’s head around one of the marks Obann had left. He’d even added whiskers. 

“Sometimes it helps to discuss with people about how you’re feeling,” Caleb said, and Molly heard him as if he were so far away. “And, and sometimes having a lot of people around you, fussing over you and looking over you, just feels stifling. Suffocating. So sometimes it can be best to have a way of making sure that no one notices anything amiss. And sometimes all you need for that is…something to give you pause. Just a moment of pause.”

Molly knew then that this little drawing _would_ give him pause, again and again. After all, if he started worrying and clawing at his skin again, he’d ruin it - he’d smudge and tear Caleb’s work, erase that sweet little inked face, and he couldn’t do that, could he? 

And then he realized that it hadn’t been by accident that Caleb had chosen that particular spot to make his mark. He realized then that Caleb _knew_ \- it wasn't just that he knew what Molly had been through or knew how Molly was feeling, but he also knew _exactly_ which scars on his skin had been left there by Obann’s will. And that thought brought with it a rush of fear before Molly’s wits caught up with him and it was replaced with a rush of something boundlessly warm and good.

Caleb had confessed once over drinks that his memory wasn’t truly perfect. After about a month or so, the pictures in his head could start to go fuzzy around the edges and details could start to slip away. 

But what had been months on end from Molly’s perspective had only been days for Caleb. From Caleb’s perspective, they hadn’t actually been apart long enough for his memory to start losing its grip of what Molly had looked like before Obann had snatched him away that night in the misty forest. 

And of course Molly had always known that Caleb’s memory was _astoundingly_ good, but to fully comprehend in that moment that Caleb had even _memorized Molly’s scars…_

“Do you like it?” Caleb asked quietly, anxiously, drawing Molly back to the world all over again. 

Molly stared at the cat and then at him in wordless, boundless awe. And then there was absolutely nothing to do but lean in close and kiss Caleb full on the mouth.

He didn’t even have time to wonder if he’d made a mistake before Caleb was kissing him back. 


End file.
